We had eleven people at this Wednesday's Wake group, which I think is probably the largest yet, with the possible exception of a special Wake group some years back when a fellow Joycean enthusiast was in town. This time we welcomed several new or newish participants, and all the more familiar members happened to be back from their travels or not yet off on their travels and conflicting schedules, which is not likely to happen again for some time.
As we 'begin again' it was rather startling to me that one of the new attendees is not actually new to the Wake at all, but was,all unknowingly, one of the instigators of our attempt. Many years ago (the late seventies) several of our members, then college students, wandered into an all night dramatization of Finnegans Wake on campus, which was inspired by or maybe even presided over by the legendary Norman O. Brown, who was at that time teaching here, at UCSC. Although I wasn't one of those students, I have heard about this marvelous event several times over the years, including the tossing of various pages of Finnegans Wake into the air, but discovered that Tim had actually been one of the performers, in some sense connected to the 'character' of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, or HCE. There seemed a strange looping of time, that someone who was part of the catalyst should now become part of this new reading, which in some sense would not have happened without his original participation. Seemed very apt as we 'begin again'.
It's also interesting that Deidre, who in some ways could be termed our own Kate (though not elderly) and who was our original barkeep who had to take a break for health reasons, is now working Wednesday nights again. What pub have we really wandered into, I wonder?
As Kathe (Kate under a different name) guides us through the 'museyroom', saying "This is..." before its many artifacts, I get a sense that it wouldn't have been possible for me to have had on the first reading, which is that the whole show is being brought to life again, a 'revival' as they're sometimes called on Broadway. As Tom said last time about the first thunderclap, which we read aloud together, there was something of an incantation to it, something a little bit creepy. As Ed was saying this time, it's all brought to life out of the ruins, after great loss. In our current historical moment, which is no longer the same moment at which we started last time, though it was as recently as 2009, it is a little easier now to imagine what it would mean to be picking through the wreckage at some not too distant date, and beginning again.
I wasn't too successful in researching some of the things that interested me in this passage, such as whether Wellington (Willingdone) represented Shem and Napoleon (Lipoleum) Shaun or visa versa, and in fact, the little I could find actually thought of both as primarily HCE figures.
But as the hen knows, when you're picking through the dump, you come across other treasures. For instance, this article on "Bruno Vico and Finnegans Wake" by Eric Rosenbloom, which gives us some sense of their philosophies and why they were of interest to Joyce. I don't mind admitting that I could do with a refresher course, and especially since I find both these men very intriguing. And I could relate to this bit about how Joyce saw Vico:
Joyce, although often referring people to Vico, also asserted he did not “believe” Vico’s science, “but my imagination grows when I read Vico as it doesn’t when I read Freud or Jung.”
Contained within the article, though, was a theory that I hadn't heard before, and which I found moving.
Hugh Kenner has suggested that the dreamer does not want to wake up, that ALP is a widow resisting the conscious awareness that her husband — executed after the 1916 Easter uprising, he says — is no longer beside her. The hanging scaffold is suppressed by becoming Tim Finnegan’s building scaffold. Her tears become the river in which her dreams flow. The book of history assures us that life always rises from the ashes, but we also know that individual loss is unrecoverable. The incomplete sentence at the end of Finnegans Wake gives the reader a choice: Leave the book and return to life, or return to the book’s first words.
This of course can't be the only interpretation, but I do find it intriguing that the article goes on to say that Joyce himself had likened Finnegans Wake to St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul.
On a MUCH lighter note, I found a Tumbler site called "Notes on Finnegans Wake," which included this YouTube animation of the "museyroom"--in Italian. If you've recently read Joyce's English version you will be surprised how much you understand, even if you don't really speak Italian. As my professor Donald Nicholl reminded us, there is the Via Negativa that the Dark Night of the Soul represents, but there is also the Via Positiva. I have always been clear which one I'd choose if I had my druthers.
As we 'begin again' it was rather startling to me that one of the new attendees is not actually new to the Wake at all, but was,all unknowingly, one of the instigators of our attempt. Many years ago (the late seventies) several of our members, then college students, wandered into an all night dramatization of Finnegans Wake on campus, which was inspired by or maybe even presided over by the legendary Norman O. Brown, who was at that time teaching here, at UCSC. Although I wasn't one of those students, I have heard about this marvelous event several times over the years, including the tossing of various pages of Finnegans Wake into the air, but discovered that Tim had actually been one of the performers, in some sense connected to the 'character' of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, or HCE. There seemed a strange looping of time, that someone who was part of the catalyst should now become part of this new reading, which in some sense would not have happened without his original participation. Seemed very apt as we 'begin again'.
It's also interesting that Deidre, who in some ways could be termed our own Kate (though not elderly) and who was our original barkeep who had to take a break for health reasons, is now working Wednesday nights again. What pub have we really wandered into, I wonder?
As Kathe (Kate under a different name) guides us through the 'museyroom', saying "This is..." before its many artifacts, I get a sense that it wouldn't have been possible for me to have had on the first reading, which is that the whole show is being brought to life again, a 'revival' as they're sometimes called on Broadway. As Tom said last time about the first thunderclap, which we read aloud together, there was something of an incantation to it, something a little bit creepy. As Ed was saying this time, it's all brought to life out of the ruins, after great loss. In our current historical moment, which is no longer the same moment at which we started last time, though it was as recently as 2009, it is a little easier now to imagine what it would mean to be picking through the wreckage at some not too distant date, and beginning again.
I wasn't too successful in researching some of the things that interested me in this passage, such as whether Wellington (Willingdone) represented Shem and Napoleon (Lipoleum) Shaun or visa versa, and in fact, the little I could find actually thought of both as primarily HCE figures.
But as the hen knows, when you're picking through the dump, you come across other treasures. For instance, this article on "Bruno Vico and Finnegans Wake" by Eric Rosenbloom, which gives us some sense of their philosophies and why they were of interest to Joyce. I don't mind admitting that I could do with a refresher course, and especially since I find both these men very intriguing. And I could relate to this bit about how Joyce saw Vico:
Joyce, although often referring people to Vico, also asserted he did not “believe” Vico’s science, “but my imagination grows when I read Vico as it doesn’t when I read Freud or Jung.”
Contained within the article, though, was a theory that I hadn't heard before, and which I found moving.
Hugh Kenner has suggested that the dreamer does not want to wake up, that ALP is a widow resisting the conscious awareness that her husband — executed after the 1916 Easter uprising, he says — is no longer beside her. The hanging scaffold is suppressed by becoming Tim Finnegan’s building scaffold. Her tears become the river in which her dreams flow. The book of history assures us that life always rises from the ashes, but we also know that individual loss is unrecoverable. The incomplete sentence at the end of Finnegans Wake gives the reader a choice: Leave the book and return to life, or return to the book’s first words.
This of course can't be the only interpretation, but I do find it intriguing that the article goes on to say that Joyce himself had likened Finnegans Wake to St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul.
On a MUCH lighter note, I found a Tumbler site called "Notes on Finnegans Wake," which included this YouTube animation of the "museyroom"--in Italian. If you've recently read Joyce's English version you will be surprised how much you understand, even if you don't really speak Italian. As my professor Donald Nicholl reminded us, there is the Via Negativa that the Dark Night of the Soul represents, but there is also the Via Positiva. I have always been clear which one I'd choose if I had my druthers.
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